Monthly archives: February, 2017

Ask yourself: Is now the time I want to make a difference for my musical career? And if so – what difference and how? Think of goal setting as if you were driving in a foreign place – You wouldn’t get where you expect to go without a clear set of directions. Goal setting is…

SoundCloud has become the first major music streaming company to launch a $4.99-a-month, ad-free, fully on-demand service – but there’s a catch. The company has today announced that its paid-for tier, SoundCloud Go, will now be available for the budget price (or £5.99 in the UK). That’s because it’s true premium product will now…

With the death of a mom and pop record store, there was nowhere to hang out anymore. For those of us who spent hours trolling through milk crates and boxes for albums, a record store closing down was like boarding up the local Y. We’d search under the cabinets for records that might not…

Tracy Maddux is the CEO of CD Baby, a digital distributor that works closely with independent musicians to get their work on platforms like iTunes, Spotify and Apple Music, among others. It was a watershed year for the half-million or so artists and labels CD Babydistributes worldwide in 2016. It was the year its artists’…

Last month, Neil Cicierega released an album called Mouth Moods. Cicierega’s name may be unfamiliar to you, but his work almost certainly is not. He created the wildly popular Potter Puppet Pals web series, as well as a slew of quirky viral videos and songs (‘Brodyquest’, ‘The Ultimate Showdown’, ‘Bustin’). Mouth Moods, his latest project,…

When I first started listening to music, it was on vinyl records. Then we used cassette tapes—source of the first mix tapes—and, yes, we would copy each others’ albums without paying any royalties. Next came CDs, followed by digital downloads. And now, of course, we’re all streaming. It seems like a natural progression, in hindsight….

The Atlanta-based hip-hop trio Migos will now release music through New York-based Motown Records and Los Angeles-based Capitol Records. The move is an extension of Atlanta-based Quality Control Music’s (QCM) joint venture with Capitol Record’s parent Capitol Music Group (CMG), a wholly owned division of Santa Monica, Calif.-based Universal Music Group. The Migos’ — Quavo,…

Producer Alex Da Kid and singer-songwriter Joseph Angel have teamed up on “American Funeral,” a powerful R&B record that targets police brutality and tensions in the United States, with lyrics like “America, the beautiful/ America, the murderer/ America, the funeral/ God bless America.” “We’re living in interesting times, and we’re all trying to make sense of…

Universal is putting a lot of faith in Alex Da Kid (aka. Alexander Grant). The major recently spent big bucks on signing a ‘unique and innovative’ multifaceted deal with the Grammy-winning Brit’s KIDinaKORNER – a combined record label, publisher, production house and marketing agency. The agreement appears to be akin to a label services set-up, where Grant (pictured)…

The promotion behemoth celebrates another record year of double-digit revenue growth. Live Nation is celebrating another record year with double-digit growth in revenue, attendance, sponsorship and advertising. Company officials released financial results for Q4 and all of 2016, reporting revenue up 15 percent for the year to $8.4 billion and operating income up a staggering 48…